$30K Anamorphic vs $1K Spherical lens. Can you even talk about them in the same sentence?

Filmmaker Ryan Freeman has asked the unaskable: can you compare a $30,000 Cooke anamorphic lens with a $1,000 Zeiss spherical lens?

Well, to insert a bit of a spoiler here, no, you can't. Cooke makes gorgeous and expensive lenses that have graced the very finest film shoots thoughout history. And the point of this video - as Ryan respectfully points out at the end - is not to make it seem like nobody needs to buy Cooke lenses any more.

But do you need to give up your filmmaking ambitions if you can't afford to pop £30,000 on an anamorphic lens? Absolutely not. You can get great - and cinematic - results for a very small fraction of this. What you don't get is the oval bokeh and the overall feel of a truly great anamorphic lens.

But what you do get with the remarkably inexpensive Zeiss lens in the video is a perfectly decent-looking shot that is bang in the middle of what filmmakers with a low budget can achieve - while they're saving up!